


TALLOW

by meclea



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well :), Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Cannibalism, POV Second Person, SMEN Spoilers, Seeking Mr Eaten's Name, Self-Mutilation, Trigger Warning for teeth pulling and oral injuries, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 09:10:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12578420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meclea/pseuds/meclea
Summary: Should you give something up?





	TALLOW

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween 2017, have some cannibalism fic. This originally began as a Loveless crossover; I've since scrapped that idea. However, I still kept a few names and appearances. Easily dismissed, won’t ruin the flow of the story.

You dream of red and of a Name, and you wake up covered in what you first think is blood only to realize it's sweat.

Irrelevant. The Name, the Name. What was the Name? Why is it important? _Whose_ name?

Your fiance is there, steadying you with quiet words soft strokes of her hands through your hair. She whispers your name, whispers, "Shhh, it's okay now. You're awake."

You look at her. She is pale. Her eyes are dark gold like the dreams of Prisoner's Honey. You cup her face with your hand, trying to ground yourself in the reality of her. "Mikado?" Yes. Her name is Mikado. That was not the name you were trying to remember. Whose name...? Your dream slips away from you even now, red fading into the black of your room.

 "Yes, it's me," she says before her arms wrap around your neck and pull you down on top of her. "It was just a dream. It's alright. _All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well_." It's the mantra of the Masters, of the Bazaar. She smells like Mikado. Her hair smells like her hair and her skin smells like her skin and it's _her_. Oh, God, it's her. You don't know why you're so shaken up. It was just a dream, just a dream—

 

+++

 

You're hungry. No, _ravenous_. It's been like this so often lately, where nothing can satiate your hunger, like some beast has taken refuge in your stomach and is consuming all of which you have consumed. Maybe you need a second mouth in your stomach, you think idly. The hunger is like a black rock in your gut, something tangible and solid and heavy. Increasingly often you bring home slabs of meat from the butcher shop for dinner.

 "You want it...rarer than this?" Mikado asks when you declare that the tonight's steak is too cooked. "There's more red than brown. I barely cooked it at all."

"I've been craving, lately," you say with an apologetic smile. There have been lots of smiles in your dreams over the past fortnight. White smiles with sharp teeth. White smiles that glisten with red. White smiles in the dank dark.

You eat the steak and wish it was rarer. You eat the steak and wish it was raw.

 

+++

 

"Why have they been building so many chandleries lately? What do they do with all the candles?"

"They haven't built any more. It's the same as always." Mikado's thumb rubs over your hand where it's tucked. Soothing, so soothing. Mikado is wonderful.

"Hm. It feels like I'm noticing them more often, then."

You don't talk about what you heard in the dream the night before: _"Illuminate the dark of the well waters. Make a pyre, fuel it with leathery wings, and light them with candles. Bright, brighter. Light will glint off of your white teeth."_

Later on, alone, you return to one of the chandleries and purchase seven candles. You don't remember why you need candles, or why seven is the number. "Mr Fires is raisin’ the tax on candles again," the chandler sighs to you. "But only on Chrysalis Candles. These are the last ones. You're a lucky one, sir." She smiles as she hands them to you in a small bag. "I shouldn't complain. Foxfires are good. _All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well_."

You wonder if that's true.

 

+++

 

_"Do you recall how we came to that place? And they sang of their lightnings and shapeful disgrace? And we tilted our vanes and ennobled our spires. They welcomed us then and commingled all choirs. And not enough, not enough. Still It mourns, and still waits the Sun."_

Your dreams repeat this like a prayer. What does it mean, what does it mean? You ask them, and they don't answer your questions but they tell you the number.

They do not tell you the Name.

 

+++

 

Mikado loves the Shuttered Palace. She loves the music, the dancing, the intrigue of the Great Game. She's good friends with the Duchess. Normally you love being swept up in the mystery and romance of it all, but today you urge Mikado along ahead of you. "I'll meet up with you soon." Something else has caught your eye: a gnarled growth of vines on the walls of the Palace, which gardeners hack at furiously with blades and shears. The vines are dark green with leaves veined with crimson, and are bursting with more toothy thorns than stalk.

There is...something, there’s _something_ …

"Stop!" you cry out. "Wait, don't cut—"

You go to push the gardeners out of the way and lunge forward. The tendrils of vines, right there at the center, those are not random swirls, they're Correspondence! They spell something, their words red and white and raw—

You feel pain rattle through your body like thousands of little polyps bursting—the thorns, of course. You can't just dive into barbed vines and not expect to be unscathed. But the Correspondence, it has something to do with him, he's trying to speak to you.

Him? Who is he? No matter. The words are right here. The Correspondence will tell you everything. You just need— to reach—…

You wake up in the Duchess's receiving hall, laid out on a sofa with Bombazine silk upholstery. Mikado's face looms over you. When she whispers it, your name from her lips is fragile, questioning, as though your identity is something she is unsure of.

You sit up. You're bandaged quite thoroughly—was the damage from the thorns that bad? "What happened?" you murmur.

"The gardeners say that you tripped and impaled yourself on a thatch of the god-awful ivy they've been trying to remove." This comes from the Duchess herself, who lounges on her own chaise a short way off, hands wrapped around a cup of steaming spore-tea. A few other people line the room, hovering curiously, wondering what it is that has been brought into their Game. "The things keep growing right back! Are you alright, dear? You were covered in blood when they brought you. You looked like you had a run in with Jack-of-Smiles himself."

"There was Correspondence," you say quietly.

"Correspondence?" the Duchess asks. A low trill of whispers flutters through the room.

"Yes, in the vines. The Correspondence was...was not coherent? It was as though someone slapped them together with very little control over it." You search your mind. You have the attention of everyone in the room as you continue, "But there were snippets. A black vault with black chains. An obsidian knife. A granite well, and a face distorted in the water in the bottom of it. Mr...Mr Veils? Waxen. Drowned. Gangrenous." The words spill out of your mouth faster than you can say them, the glossolalia of a mortal trying to speak the language of gods. "Millicent. Pale. _God-Eaters._ Ah, ah, ah, ah. A reckoning…is not to be postponed indefinitely." The words come out of your mouth, but they are not your own. A reckoning. That's important, somehow.

Mikado's face is ashen. The Duchess's is even paler. All of their faces combine to make one great expression of condescension for something that they do not understand. The room is silent until Mikado says, "Please excuse us," and no one stops her from ushering you out with a tight, clammy grip. The palace feels even more shuttered when you leave.

At home, Mikado makes you Zzoup, an expensive comfort food that is sometimes available from Wolfstack Docks, depending on what ambitious zailors bring back. Sitting down together to dine, Mikado openly stares at you. "What are you doing?"

"I don't know," you say truthfully, frowning. "There's someone...the Masters did something to someone. And that someone is trapped somewhere. There's a Name. If I can find the Name, I can find the place. The Correspondence in the vines would tell me the Name, but I lost too much blood before I could read it."

Her lack of response causes you to look up. She swallows and says, "No, I meant...right now. What are you doing _right now?_ "

Right now...?

You realize you've ripped off part of a bandage and have been chewing on it. You slowly put it down.

 

+++

 

Should you give something up?

 

+++

 

Mikado seems to think the two of you should go to church more often. You don't like it, but you suppose it's good for appearance's sake, especially after the whole spectacle at the Shuttered Palace. People have been talking, Mikado says, and you see how they stare at you. The Vicar himself looks at you like one would look at a rat.

"What do you mean?" Mikado says when you voice this. "He isn't looking at you in any particular way." She doesn't sound too confident.

"He wants to cover the sins of the Masters, Mikado, can't you see?"

"What do you mean?" she asks again, but before you can explain, you are interrupted by a courier dressed in somber livery and visage. Their shoulders are either weighed down by the bulbous bag they carry, or the weight of things known that perhaps should not be.

Do they know the Name?

They know yours, evidently. They say your name, ask you to confirm that it’s yours.

"Yes."

"A message." They pass on a notecard. Their hands are sweaty, nervous. "From Mr Irons, sir."

Mikado flinches and peers over your shoulder as you open it, her shaking hand gripping your arm. "What does a Master want to do with us?"

"Not you, ma'am. Just him."

The note reads: **You are pursuing a name. End your pursuit now.**

They know. Of course they know. The Masters, they know, no, no, they _acted_ , they gave him to knives and lacre, and now he lies at the bottom of a well, drowned. Drowned? Drowned with what?

You drown with hunger. " _All shall be well_ ," you tell the courier, " _and all manner of thing shall be well._ " You crumple up the note and eat it. Mikado is speechless. The courier watches with hooded eyes and then turns away.

 

+++

 

In tonight's dream are the Masters of the Bazaar. There have been whispers of what they are: fallen angels, stunted pterodactyls, sentient fungus colonies. How they go by "Mr," but they are not men, are not women, are not human at all.

Here, stripped of their cloaks, they look like horrid disfigured bats. Pinned are their membraned wings by giant flaying knives, their fanged mouths open and screeching. The pyre is lit, and the blaze roars louder than the Masters. You must have started the fire yourself, because your hand clutches a single candle, its wick blackened with use. The candle's voice comes from behind you, hissing, dominating, certain. It is the sound of darkness lurking just beyond the candlelight.

"A reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely."

Mr Veils screams the loudest. Then you're the one screaming, and you've woken up, and Mikado is awake, too, now, trying to calm you down with soft words and softer touches.

"Mr Fires!" you exclaim. "It wasn't originally the one in charge of candles."

"What?"

"He said so, he told me. Candles did not belong to Mr Fires. Mr Iron has metalwork. Mr Hearts trades in food. Mr Pages is books and written things. So on and so forth. Mr Fires, he has coal and gas and candle. But candles were not in the domain of Mr Fires at first. There was another!" Yes, yes! It makes sense, doesn't it? This is something, this is a step closer to the name. You push on: "For Mr Fires, the candles burn, but for _him,_ they did not just burn, they illuminated. He was so bright, Mikado, so bright, and they drowned him. They drowned his light in the black waters of the well!"

Your hands gesture around as you talk. The dampness on your face is caused by sweat and tears. For him, it was black water, then blood. Or was it the other way around?

"You're scaring me," Mikado whispers.

It's a knife through the thicket. The crash after a Honey dream. The stone dropped in stagnant water. Everything is clear for a moment, and you are not a Seeker of the Name; you are _you_. The beautiful creature before you, gazing at you with undiluted fear, is Gomon Mikado, an ethereal being who is too good for you but said "Yes" when you asked her to marry you.

"Mikado," you breathe. " _I'm_ scaring me. I don't know why I'm doing this."

"Oh, my sweet knight," she says. You realize she hasn't called you that in a long, long time. "We will make it through this. _All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well._ "

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all shall be well shall be well shall be well well well well well well well well well well

Drowned in a well. Eaten by cannibal kings, by would-be-gods. Do they not hear his voice?

Something must cross your face then, because Mikado's breath hitches and as she shakily says, "Go back to sleep," she moves as far away across the bed as she possibly can.

 

+++

 

do not rest until their wings are in your teeth. knives in your teeth. your teeth _are_ the knives. they are one and the same. that which was eaten was betrayed, and so shall you be.

 

+++

 

"Do you know the name?"

Mikado looks at you in surprise, but you're not asking her. You're asking the people ambulating next to you in the sanctum of the church.

"The Name?" one asks, uncertainly.

Lies. " _The Name_ ," you hiss. "What is his _Name?_ " The name, the name, the name, repeating in your mind like a Gregorian chant. Mikado says _your_ name, pulling at your arm. You wrench it away from her. "Tell me," you say, whirling on the next group, "what is his _Name?_ "

"Calm down, sir, explain what you mean!"

"You all know. You know! He speaks of a reckoning, and it will not be postponed. _Tell me his Name._ "

"You're raving!"

"I’m searching for the truth! You earth-crawlers! Bazaar-slaves, all of you! You have been indoctrinated. We need to free him. Just tell me his _Name_ —"

Mikado somehow wrangles you out of the church before you insult the Masters, because that would have sanctions more tangible than being scorned by all of your peers. "They're going to put you in the Tomb Colonies," she sobs later. "Or they'll put you in New Newgate. Or they'll just kill you, maybe even permanently. What can I do to help you? What do I do?"

"All shall _not_ be well," you say. "Why can none of you see it? Mikado, you have to help me. The Masters wronged him. He demands restitution."

She flees into the bathroom where she locks the door. You bang on it a few times. "Hiding isn't going to solve this! He comes in dreams, not through doors." She screams. You sit outside the door and wonder how things have come to be like this.

 

+++

 

ALL SHALL BE WELL AND ALL MANNER OF THING SHALL BE WELL

 

+++

 

_"When they came to that place, they brought promises of union, unbound and untrammeled by the bright laws above."_

The voice curls up like black tentacles from the well before you. It speaks of a sacrifice in a lost city. It speaks of years of darkness. It speaks of candles and all the things it is possible to lose.

_"How could you have forgotten that?"_

They find you gnawing on granite well-stones, teeth cracking, gums red. Someone makes you eat something repugnant that puts you into a sleep void of any dreams at all. It is both a relief and an impediment. You can't hear him like this. You worship and fear him the way one worships and fears a god.

You wake up in your own bed, in your own room. Mikado is in the far corner. Her face is swollen, eyes blotchy. She is no longer crying, but she must have been earlier for a very, very long time. Her face is mottled with it. "What are you doing to yourself?" she asks. "Mr Iron said to stop whatever this is. Please listen to it. I miss you. Come back to me." Her voice sounds like it's drowning, drowning, drowning.

Your jaw aches and your throat is raw and your stomach growls like the engine of a galleon. " _All shall be well,"_ you croak, " _and all manner of thing shall be well._ The well, the well. I just have to listen to what the well says."

She turns away. She tells you quietly that she is going to spend some time at Seimei and Nisei's house, and that there is a tincture on the end table that the doctor said you should take every four hours, but she does not say if the tincture is meant to lessen your pain or to stop what they think is your raving. She does not come back for three days.

While she's gone, you light the seven candles you had bought from the chandlery and watch them burn away completely. They're not the right candles anyways.

+++

 

_and not enough, not enough. still it mourns, and still waits the sun_

They drowned him to get closer to the sun? That which was eaten was betrayed, to get to...the sun? No, not the sun, but the Sun. The Bazaar, the Masters, Judgements, and the Sun. The Sun. The Sun the Sun the Sun the Sun the Sun the Sun

 

+++

 

You don't think to clean the soot and ash off of you until you get home. Mikado is in the kitchen, shredding mushrooms for some stew or another. She stares at you but makes no comment. She doesn't even look fazed. You have done so much.

You hate the black. _He_ hates the black. You scrub the black until the skin underneath is angry and sore.

You refuse to eat the fungal stew Mikado has made for dinner, opting instead for the veal you had stowed away. Raw, of course. Juices drip from your chin. You feel like a god.

"I could hear a crier walk past a while ago," Mikado says. "A chandlery down the road burned down."

You eat. You're starving. You're ravenous. You wanted desperately to eat the candles in the chandlery when you went to visit. Instead you lit them, and they whickered and roared like horses of fire. The conflagration was beautiful, better than dark water, twice better, better seven times over. Seven is the number.

"What a shame," you say cheerfully. Mikado stares at you and does not say anything at all.

 

+++

 

Should you give something up?

The words repeat themselves over and over in your mind. The Masters gave him up. Should you? Give something up for him in return? Restitution. Restitution for the Drowned Man? For yourself? You have already given so much. You've burned. You've sought out answers to questions the Masters do not want answered. You bear the scorn and contempt of those you once called friends. But he gave up more. They made him give everything up, even though he was the most giving of all of them.

What more could he possibly want you to give up? What do you have left to give? Your life? No, not that. He needs you. A feast will not be postponed indefinitely, and you have been invited to it.

What should you give up? Your humanity?

 

 

+++

 

The dentist doesn't understand why you want to do this and objects at first, but you pay well enough to warrant his eventual shrug and a bland "It's your mouth."

You ask him to select teeth which, when removed, won't compromise your ability to speak. Just a few. Just enough. "What the hell have you been putting in your mouth?" he exclaims once he has you lying down, mouth held open with some contraption or another. The light glinting off of his glasses and his mask pulled over the lower half of his face hides his disgusted expression. "Your teeth are cracked and your gums are...." He continues muttering under his breath. He must not have heard about the well incident. "Can you stop dribbling?" he asks peevishly. Oh. Of course you're salivating. It's difficult to stop. Soon the teeth in your jaw will reside cozily in your gut. Oh God. It will almost be as if you have two mouths. You will be able to consume— consume—

 

+++

 

_do not forget , do not forgive ; do not forget , do not forgive  
_

 

_do not_ forget

 

+++

 

There is a knock on your door. You're in the kitchen preparing a pie, so you yell for Mikado to answer the door, but she is not there for some reason (she's been gone an awful lot lately, hasn't she?) so you get up and do it yourself. On the back of the door someone has scrawled the word "MONSTER" with black Lamplighter Beeswax. It's been there for days now. Mikado stopped trying to scrub it off after it showed up for the fifth time. Damn Urchin brats.

On the other side of the door is a tall blue-haired man, eyes like a pair of Deep Ambers, the kind that the Rubbery Men so like. His skin has the texture of tallow, like a candle made of human fat. It's you! You are at your door. "I have a few questions," you say. "It's just procedure. Annex Thirty-Two requires as much."

"Answers are required," you reply, not understanding what's going on but knowing that it's the correct response. "It's only fitting. Article Twenty-one."

_Shall all be well? Who are the laws?_ With each answer, your smile widens. _Which ink? What rolls and bobs there? Who is hooked? What is your name? What is due?_

_Should you give something up?_

You answer your questions with questions and do not understand the answers. You're so hungry. You're interrupting your feast, so you decide to become part of the feast. You take you, the _other_ you, fold the top of the pie over your smiling face. You lay the table and tuck your napkin into your collar. You begin.

Pain jolts you awake. There's just one you again, and your teeth are sunken into your own arm, not a doppelganger’s. You taste the blood slick across your mouth, and you lick it, but refrain from devouring any more. You bandage your wound quietly and pull your sleeve down before Mikado wakes.

 

+++

 

a reckoning is not to be postponed indefinitely

 

+++

 

Seven number the candles that must be lit. Seven number the scars you must bear, that will not heal. Seven, the number of chains you bear, weighting your mind with your sins. Seven are the stains that sully your soul, for only a monster could do what must be done. Seven betrayals, seven rituals, seven confessions. False saints: one will inhabit you, seven will occupy you.

Seven candles, seven candles, seven candles, for the Master who kept them.

 

+++

 

You know what you should give up.

He wants what is most valuable to you. For you, that thing is a person. He will have it. He will have her. You will give her to him the same way he was given, with knives (the knife in your hand, ready to flay) and water (no need to drown her though, she's not bright enough) and teeth ( _teeth_ , teeth like knives, teeth _are_ knives, white and then red, now red).

"Do you recall?" you say softly, so softly. Quiet as a butterfly's wings. Here is Mikado, getting ready to retire for the night, pulling on her night gown; it was one you had commissioned for her out of Puzzle-Damask Silk. You remember the first night you put it on her, slowly, watching the cloth grip the curves of her body. You remember taking it off soon after just like that, slow silk sliding. Skin can be shelled in the same slipping way.

"What?" Mikado asks. She sounds so tired. You have put her through so much. Soon, soon. She is your restitution to him, she will suffer no more, not like he did. Is she comforted?

"Do you recall how we came to that place? And they sang of their lightnings and shapeful disgrace? And we tilted our vanes and ennobled our spires. They welcomed us then and commingled all choirs."

Mikado screams, but you hear his screams even louder.

When the deed is done, you look at her body and say, "Do you recall? I do, and so much more." Is this voice yours? Is it your own? "I remember how you sold me. For your freedom, from chains forged in a horizon-place, from the treachery of daughters. You gave me to their knives. A reckoning. The bill is almost due."

Tallow can be made from human fat. Meat is meat no matter what animal it comes from.

The table is set for two, for you and for him. He will not come. He will not come, for he was eaten,  _Eaten_. That's who he is. That's what he gave up. Your mind is calm now, like the surface of stagnant water. You eat the body and drink the wine, red dripping from your jowls once more, and you feel relieved, almost rejuvenated. You have the Name. Now to find the well in which his body was drowned. You will go NORTH. You will pull up his brutalized body, and he will have his reckoning at long last.


End file.
